Taylor Swift praises The Giver by Lois Lowry, as a film adaptation starring
Jeff Bridges and Meryl Streep opens in America

Country music singer Taylor Swift and Oscar-winning actress Meryl Streep have paid tribute to children's writer Lois Lowry, who wrote the young adult dystopian thriller The Giver.

The Giver opens in cinemas in America tomorrow and stars Swift, Streep and Jeff Bridges. Lowry, 77, published the book in 1994 and it won the prestigious Newberry Medal in 1994 and has sold over 10 million copies worldwide.

Swift, 24, read the book in school and says it had a huge influence on her outlook on life. "It celebrates all the things I hold really dear and are important to me, like our history, our music, our art, our intellect and our memories.I'm seeing so many fans write to me on Instagram and Twitter, or in letters, saying they're having such a tough time with life because they can't imagine that we can experience such great pain, such intense loss, such insecurity.And the thing that I just wish I could tell them, over and over, is that we live for these fleeting moments of happiness. Happiness is not a constant. It's something that we only experience glimpses of every once in a while – but it's worth it. And I think that's what they'll take away from this movie."

Swift plays Rosemary in the film (she appears as a hologram playing the piano with a young version of the Giver, played by Bridges) and Honolulu-born author Lowry, 77, has paid tribute to the singer's role. "Taylor's role in the movie is much the same in the book, except in the book she’s only remembered … and in the movie you can see the memory of her. She appears in, I don’t know the technical term would be, but you can see her. And it’s very compelling.”

Streep, who says the book was on her children's required summer reading list, plays the stern Chief Elder. "I wish I could go back to the book and fill out that character now," Lowry told AP.

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Lowry also won a Newbery Medal for Number the Stars in 1989 and received the Margaret Edwards Award from the American Library Association for her contribution to writing for teenagers.

The Giver is about a boy called Jonas, who lives in a community ruled by a Committee of Elders and everything has to be the same. Everything is in black and white and emotion is forbidden; sexual "stirrings" are blunted with daily medication. Memories are not allowed and when Jonas, played by Brenton Thwaites, is allowed to receive memories and learn about the outside world, his life is thrown into chaos.

The Giver, which is directed by Phillip Noyce, has taken almost 20 years to bring to the screen. It began in 1994 when Bridges was searching for a film project in which he could direct his father, Lloyd, and one that his children, then teenagers, would want to see. An entry in a children's book catalogue caught his eye. "It had a picture of this old grizzled guy on the cover. And I said, 'Oh, Dad could do that!'" He read it, then mentioned it to his kids. "They said, 'Oh, we know that, we read it in school. It turned out there were whole curriculums based on it. I thought, 'It's gonna be a cinch'. And that was 18 years ago," Bridges, who is co-producer of the movie, told AP.

Brenton Thwaites and Odeya Rush in The Giver PHOTO: AP

Lowry hopes the film will expand the readership for The Giver. "As for fans of the book," she adds, "we all so hope they won't be outraged by the changes that were necessary. I've been trying to reassure them!". She went to watch it being filmed in South Africa and said the filmmakers sought her input. "One day I muttered – not to anyone in particular – that I hated a certain line of dialogue. And suddenly I saw it had been cut."

The book, which depicts euthanasia, caused controversy and was banned in some states. Lowry thinks that if she published her book today, it wouldn't cause nearly the ripples it did two decades ago. "Now, we've been exposed to something like The Hunger Games, where children are killing other children. So The Giver sounds like mild fare compared to that."